News for hackers. Stuff that matters.
Re:Ex-SolarCity employees: We were fired after reporting mil... by adamson on Tuesday July 31, 2018 @09:02AM (#17652783)
That construction is so weird that I'm going to assume it was a typo and that they meant "tens or hundreds"
Re:Ex-SolarCity employees: We were fired after reporting mil... by shafyy on Tuesday July 31, 2018 @09:33AM (#17652969)
Ok. So it could be either $40M or $400M - that's a huge range. Let's assume something in the middle, like $200m. Does it seem credible to you guys that nobody except the three plaintiffs noticed that SolarCity faked half of their 2016 revenue?
Re:Ex-SolarCity employees: We were fired after reporting mil... by mistercow on Tuesday July 31, 2018 @10:04AM (#17653190)
Well first off, I don’t see a time range here. This could easily be stretched over multiple years.

Secondly, if someone says “tens or hundreds of millions”, I assume that they’re giving a rough estimate based on incomplete information. If I’m evaluating the credibility of such an estimate, then I’ll consider the most conservative end of the range, which in this case is $20M. If we suppose that that was spread over three years, then we’re talking about 1-2% of total revenue. That doesn’t sound so implausible, right?

Finally, SolarCity’s 2016 revenue was $730M, not $400M.

Re:Ex-SolarCity employees: We were fired after reporting mil... by shafyy on Wednesday August 01, 2018 @02:36AM (#17660177)
That does sound plausible and also not newsworthy :-)
Re:Ex-SolarCity employees: We were fired after reporting mil... by tango24 on Tuesday July 31, 2018 @09:59AM (#17653154)
I would wager that anything in a range 10%-50% of missing revenue, for a publicly traded company, would be caught by external auditor. And I’d im not mistaken, external auditors are required. If I’m wrong on either of those accounts, then I’d be seriously concerned about our stock market.
Re:Ex-SolarCity employees: We were fired after reporting mil... by TheOtherHobbes on Tuesday July 31, 2018 @10:37AM (#17653489)
This shouldn’t have me laugh out loud, but it did.